


Oft in the woods is a listener nigh

by amberfox17



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Norse Religion & Lore, Blood and Injury, Dubious Consent, M/M, Sex Magic, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-22 05:39:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3717178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amberfox17/pseuds/amberfox17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ficlet based on my three favourite things: norse mythology, Thorki and werewolves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Oft in the woods is a listener nigh**

The ravens lead Loki down through the forest, a massed procession of dark wings skimming over the trees, but the stench of carrion hits him even before he steps out on to the beach and sees the battlefield. The ravens and gulls are waging a fierce battle for rights to the spoils, though in truth there is plenty for all: the dead litter the sand, staring vacantly into the sky as the waves lap at their bloodstained clothes. There’s no ships and no survivors, much less victors; whoever these men and women fought for, they’ve long since left, abandoning their dead on this lonely shore.

Another territorial dispute, Loki supposes, or perhaps a bloodfeud. There’s a banner wedged beneath a knot of bodies, but when he tugs it out, the corpses jerking in a parody of resistance, it’s torn nearly in half and too filthy to tell him which petty Jarl faced which stubborn kinsmen in this fight. It’s of little interest either way. The only reason Loki has come down out of his woods is to see if any remained who might be a threat to his solitude and to join the ravens in their looting; despite the rumours, he has no taste for human flesh, but there might be good boots here, useful for winter, iron for trading or jewellery for him to keep.

It’s gory work, but Loki is no stranger to death, and he works methodically, pacing up and down the battlefield, picking out trinkets and tidbits he can make use of. He’s so absorbed in his treasure hunting that it takes him a while to notice what a man less used to magic would have spotted straight away: that here, at the heart of the battle, there’s a knot of bodies that aren’t human. Loki inspects their great fangs and sharp claws dispassionately, noting the glossy pelts and the horrendous wounds required to bring them down. Most have limbs missing, jaws broken and skulls smashed – and it still took half a hundred warriors to stop just a handful of uflhednar, all of whom died doing it. Not another spat between neighbours then: no-one brings a warg to war without a cause worth killing your best for.

Loki hawks and spits. Idiots, all of them. Making is a warg is no small magic and the price for the seidrmarr and the warrior equally high. The Lord of War is a most high and terrible god, and selling your soul to him for battle-madness and a glorious death a bargain only the desperate make. Loki leans down to examine the black warg closest to him, picking up a paw and squeezing so the knife-like claws extend and retract, like a cat’s. He’s only ever seen a warg far off in the distance – like any sensible person – but this close, it’s much more obvious that they are not wolves, not bears, but something else entirely. The long muzzle and general shape is lupine, and he’s seen one running fluidly on all fours, with a distinctly wolfish loping stride, but the powerful shoulders are more bear like, and the thick ruff is unique to the creature. It’s over-muscled, big and heavy, and were it a natural creature it would have be a solitary creature, demanding a huge territory just to keep it fed. As it is, Loki’s never heard of one lasting more than a few days, all its power turned to bloodlust, the human underneath lost in the god’s frenzy until its very heart burns out.

These must have been fresh made, for this battle. Loki picks his way among them, fascinated more by the magic holding them together than the proof of their ferocity scattered underfoot. Seidr lingers in the air, and he need only mutter and sketch Kenaz in the air for the web of magic to flare into view, the wargs’ bodies blurring into thickly woven nets of greasy, greenish light binding wolfpelts to warriors. Fine work, well made; enough variation that this was done by more than one spell-worker. A seidkona and a priest of the battle-god, most likely, their weave too tight for Loki to unpick the craftsmanship for himself. As he wanders through the wargs, he realises they died defending something – no, someone, their bodies piled thick in a rough circle, surrounded by heaps of savagely mauled humans. Unusually disciplined behaviour for ulfhednar; every one Loki has ever seen has been a mindless berserker, as likely to turn on its allies as its foes. Willing volunteers for the spell, then, holding a single purpose like a flame in their minds before the ritual stripped them of their humanity. How interesting.

The ulfhedinn at the centre of the pile is certainly striking, even bigger than the creatures surrounding him, its matted fur a dull copper now but with the gleam of gold still visible in the unstained patches. Loki squats to examine it more closely, pushing a darker body aside unceremoniously, and is rewarded with a shine brighter even than the most lustrous pelt. This one is wearing an twisted arm ring, the gold rods distorted where it has been forced wide to fit it over the beast’s massive foreleg, but still a thing of beauty – and enormous wealth, a veritable king’s ransom, gifted to this doomed warrior for him to take into death in place of the funeral he should have had. Loki grins to himself and kneels over the warg, to get a better grip for twisting it off.

The moment his hands touch the ulfhedinn, it lurches up, breath steaming as it snarls, snapping furiously at the empty air.

Loki flings himself back, a song on his lips and runes at his fingertips, though he doubts much will be effective against an ulfhedinn strong enough to still live. The beast screams defiance, scrabbling at the gory sand as it tries to stand and fails, legs collapsing under its own body weight. Its burning blue eyes roll in their sockets, unable to fix on Loki or its surroundings, and as it crashes back down, it exposes its left flank and an enormous open wound, now pulsing fresh blood, a cloud of flies exploding outwards to reveal bare bone and the sickly smell of infection. The warg screams again, a painfully human sound, and then slumps, head thumping to the ground.

Loki doesn’t move until the flies have resettled on the ulfhedinn, watching the shallow, almost imperceptible rise and fall of the thing’s chest. It’s only when a fly settles on the warg’s eyelid and it fails to blink that he takes a shuddering breath and recasts Kenaz, venturing closer only when the rune reveals how little life is left now. There, in the tangled skein of spells, is a tiny knot of white light: a mother’s love, a brief invocation to the Lady that her son might return to her. Nothing more than a hopeless prayer murmured during the preparation of this warrior, and yet powerful enough that it has trapped the warg’s breath within its broken body, kept its soul from being taken by the Valkyries, and even now keeps it living as its lifeblood ebbs out into the sand. The man within the beast hovers on the edge of life, condemned to a long, agonising death, as each heartbeat grows slower and slower.

The most formidable killer seidr can make lies helpless at Loki’s feet.

Glee bubbles up in Loki and his laughter echoes around the windswept beach. What a prize has come to him at last!

***

It takes Loki hours to fashion a litter strong enough to carry the ulfhedinn from the beach through the forest, not least because of the bindrunes he casts over and over to be sure the creature will not wake again. It’s back-breaking work as he shoves the dead aside to get the crude sledge to where the golden warg lies, and even worse as he struggles to drag the beast along the gametrails in the forest. He doesn’t need to look behind him to know they are carving out a new, broad path through the undergrowth; he will have to return tomorrow and cover his tracks, in case any more warriors return to the beach later.  When he finally reaches the small house he has built into an overhanging cliff face, there’s another challenge: manhandling the ulfhedinn through his narrow doorway and into the corner he’s cleared out to keep it in. He debating taking the warg to the springs first, to get it clean before bringing it into his house, but couldn’t face the extra journey and besides, the thing is so weak that the shock of the cold water might well kill it. He’d dearly like to keep it in the lean-to pen he built for his goats, but they’re already skittish at the smell of blood and predator, and if he wants the warg to survive the night he’ll have to sit up with it, a hardship not to be made worse by depriving himself of his fire and bed.

It’s been a long time since Loki practised care for anyone but himself, but the basics of healing come to mind swiftly enough: boil the water over his hearthfire, wash the wounds, bind what he can – he uses nearly all of his stock of poultices and clean rags in this first treatment; first thing tomorrow he’ll have to replace it all – build up the fire to keep it to warm and trickle some water into its slack mouth. It swallows reflexively, a good sign, and when he examines it again through Kenaz he can see its body is still clinging to life despite the punishment it has suffered. The magic is all but burnt out; whoever the man was before the magic took him, he must have had a will strong enough to move mountains.

Immediate crisis over, Loki can relax into his usual routine of preparing his meal, stepping around the enormous warg splayed out on his floor, and turn his mind to who this creature might have been. Well-loved, if the loyalty of his people and the care in the spells is any indication; well-born and wealthy, to wear such an arm ring into battle. A man of status and power, but not the only one in his family, else he would never have been sacrificed in war. Whoever sent him to that beach knew he would not return, but did not throw him away lightly. He was given a strength beyond men, that he might claim victory for his cause before he was lost to it.

The arm-ring is heavy in Loki’s hands and gleams in the firelight as he turns it over and over in his hands. The battle on the beach was no squabble then, and too close for comfort. He came here precisely to avoid the folly of men. But he remembers well his time of courts and kings and he can well imagine whose son this noble fool might be…and if he is, ah, then Loki has even more work to do, and even more glorious rewards glittering on the horizon.

But only if the ulfhedinn survives the night.

***

The hours march by monotonously, marked by the slow creep of the moonlight across Loki’s window rather than any change in his charge. In the absence of anything more productive to do, he settles into a simple routine of pouring water down the warg’s throat every hour or so, and keeping the fire hot enough to have him sweating. At least it gives enough light for him to read by, though so far he has found only frustratingly repetitive accounts of ulfhednar in his books.

Loki stretches in the fading firelight, rubbing at his gritty eyes. The fire has banked down to little more than ash and coals, and he tosses the last handful of logs onto it while checking on the warg. It seems to be sleeping peacefully, the rise and fall of its chest shallow but consistent. It’s taken the water without much fuss overnight: perhaps a light broth might be the next step? He eyes the warg, with his sight and with Kenaz. To both, it looks stable, though by no means well. It seems unlikely it will die in the short time it will take Loki to catch something to eat.

Decision made, Loki slips out of the house with a handful of snares and a slingshot; he has no grander ambition than a rabbit or two for now, and a steady supply of small game for the next few games. At some point he’ll have to go after something larger for the warg, but not tonight. The hunter’s moon has frosted the ground with silver, sharpening the forest in its glow, and as he makes his way through the undergrowth he hears the soft call of an owl to his left – and the muffled thump of its mate catching a mouse or vole to its right. He cannot hope to match their silent flight, but he stealthily picks his way around his territory with familiar ease, and it is not long before three plump rabbits are bunched in his hand, his traps scattered around his house to catch the dawn traffic.

He’ll come back for them later, and cover the tracks from the beach too; the goats will need to be taken away from the house for grazing if he wants them calm enough to milk. A busy day after a long night – a day that is hovering just below the horizon, as the night turns to the dismal grey just before dawn. There had better be some use in the warg, to warrant all this disruption to his ordered life. Loki steps back into the house, mind turning in slow circles, hands full of rabbits, squinting as the flames war with his night-vision, his home turned momentarily to a place of shadows and secrets.

The growl reverberates around the room and rattles low in Loki’s chest.

Every hair on his body prickles to attention even as adrenalin floods through him and he still has only seconds before the darkness is moving, before two points of cold fire detach themselves from the corner and resolve into narrowed eyes and bright, shimmering teeth. The warg should be out cold but the damn thing is on its feet, lips writhing in a snarl, gaze fixed on Loki.

Loki drops the rabbits and dives behind his rocking chair, raw, animal panic gracing him with a speed he did not know he possessed. The warg springs in the same moment, charging forward, and through the gibbering terror in his mind Loki reaches desperately for his most familiar magic, the swift slashing strokes of destructive hail.

Loki hurls Hagall at it, but the ulfhedinn just shakes it off, not even slowing down as it smashes through the chair and leaps at Loki, jaws wide. Loki gets an arm up just in time and the fangs lock around his arm like a steel trap, puncturing through his thick layers of cloth, his metal bracelets crumpling under the pressure. White-hot pain flares up his arm but Loki is too busy to notice it, sketching the strongest bindrune he can think of and hissing it out with breath and spit, trusting the blood no doubt seeping from his forearm will do for a bond. The bindrune crackles to life in balefire and he slams it into the warg’s chest, its fur sizzling as it burns away.

The warg releases him instantly, roaring its pain, but remains suspended over him as the spell takes effect, as the enchanted wolfskin writhes, a mass of moss-green flames, peeling away from its soul – and the man underneath, a man who blanches white in horror as his madness lifts away with the wolfskin.

“I -” the man rasps, reaching for Loki, but this is no moment of mercy and Loki has too little time to waste it listening to the warrior’s confusion. The runes and bindrunes painted on the man’s skin are faded, the horse’s blood flaking away, but they were enough to hold him in his wargskin this long and will do for Loki’s purpose now. The warg’s body absorbed most of the wounds from the battle, but the one that should have killed him reached through the magic, and it is bleeding sluggishly even now, a black and foul-smelling tear down his left flank, from ribs to hip. Loki quickly smothers his right hand with the blood leaking from his left arm and then drives his fingers into the wound, ignoring the man’s cry, until fresh, red blood springs out and he can get to the fiddly business of rewriting the runes with one hand and feeding seidr into them with the other. He daren’t alter the physical spells, not with the man so weak; for now, he simply shores them up, so that the unnatural healing of the warg will restart after feeding on Loki’s magic. They’ll be time to unpick the weave later.

Loki sings softly to himself, a simple, rhythmic chant, drawing in galdr to bolster the seidr draining away into the man before him; it should, by rights, be a prayer to the Lord of War, since this warrior has been blessed by him before, but Loki will be damned if he calls on that treacherous old bastard, and besides, one dose of battle-madness is more than enough. Instead, he sings of strength, of the wild ox and the green earth, casting Ur with his breath to balance the fury of the blood runes. He can make an educated guess at what this warrior drank prior to the ritual to goad him into bloodlust; it must have passed from him now, leaving his human mind clear, and the galdr in Loki’s song will keep it that way, keeping the beast down even when the pelt resettles around him. The man keeps trying to speak to him, but Loki is too busy casting to respond, and after a few attempts he finally catches on and stays quiet, waiting for Loki to finish.

Time crawls as Loki works, his song becoming a meaningless litany of sounds as he focuses on the flow of power, shunting it from the living world to the man at the heart of the spell-weave. This would be so much easier under an open sky, but since he must do it now, he will do it right. His forearm is throbbing painfully and nausea roils in his gut; he was lucky, very lucky, that the warg was slowed by its injuries. He will not keep such a threat in his house. But he has never worked this kind of magic before, has never studied how to force a skinchange on someone with no seidr of their own, and though he considers himself a great innovator in magic, in truth he has no real idea what he should do. This wasn’t supposed to happen yet! He should have had a few days to study the web of spells wrapped around the warg-warrior before it came to, enough time to understand at least the basics of how this magic works before trying to twist it to his own needs. As it is, he is working blind, repairing what runes he can make out, and guessing at the blank spaces, trusting in the lingering memory of the spell to smooth over any blunders.

He’s reasonably sure this won’t kill the warrior – he’s proved a resilient sort so far – but he can’t stop to worry about what mistakes he might be making. If he ceases spellworking, the enchanted pelt will swallow the warrior up once more and either the shock will kill him, and waste Loki’s efforts thus far, or it will simply revert to what it was moments ago: a mindless beast so intent on carnage that it will kill itself doing its best to kill Loki. Neither are acceptable outcomes, and so a patch job of restoring some calm to the warrior’s mind without disturbing his body is the best Loki can manage.

There. Despite his misgivings, he paints the last rune with the same sureness as this first, ensuring they are all equally strong and balanced, and lets his song end on the long exhale of ur. His head is spinning as he straightens up, utterly drained, and he is so tired he quite forgets to tell the warrior he is finished.

The screaming is mercifully brief, but the warg gives him a filthy glare once it has recovered enough to get to its feet. The wolfish body is whole and intact, give or take the wounds suffered in battle, which is no small relief. The fact that it is sane – and human – enough to be unhappy about being on four feet instead of two is proof that the recasting worked, something it would do well to remember instead of huffing at Loki. Better a warg than dead.

“I cannot keep calling you it, I suppose,” Loki says aloud. “If you told me your name, I was not listening. Can you write?”

The warg nods its heavy head ponderously.

“You’ve already ruined my chair,” Loki says, pulling what remains of the seat out of the wreckage. “Here.”

The limited dexterity of its paws is clearly frustrating to the warg, but at least its claws are sharp and it just about manages four shaky runes in the wood.

“Thor,” Loki reads when it – when _he_ is done. “That’s better. I am Loki.”

Thor dips his head again, and then lifts his muzzle towards Loki’s arm, whining as he does so.

“I will see to it presently,” Loki replies. “Do you remember doing it?”

Thor tilts his head to one side and then the other, and then shrugs his shoulders, a surprisingly human gesture – but not one Loki can interpret with great certainty. He imagines Thor remembers a little of what he did in the battle-madness, but hazily, as the priests do when they dream with the gods. It would be fascinating if he does, if he can tell Loki something of what it is like to commune with the Battle Lord, to be adrift within your own self and surrender to pure fury. But that is not a conversation they can manage with claw-scratchings and pantomiming.

“Your lack of speech is most irritating,” Loki says. “For now, we are both in need of rest. Stay still, so I can see what fresh damage you have done to yourself.”

Thor’s tail droops but he remains still as Loki checks him over, wincing only when Loki prods the long wound on his side. It doesn’t look much better than it did before, but the smell of infection is lessening, and Loki is confident that with the amount of power he’s fed into it, the accelerated healing of the warg body will begin to work again soon. In the meantime, it’s another round of washing and bandaging, for himself and Thor, and despite his exhaustion he forces himself to move, to gather up the fresh water and clean linen scattered around his home. Thor is restless as Loki works, trying to help but far too clumsy to do so, awkward in his body in a way the mindless beast wasn’t.

“Stop it!” Loki snaps as Thor accidently knocks over the ewer of water for the third time. “For the love of the Lady, just lie down!”

Thor retreats to his corner, suitably chastened, but once Loki has finished bandaging them up, he carefully puts a paw on Loki’s thigh and looks at him pleadingly.

“What?” Loki asks. “If you are hurting, I cannot help you. I have done all I can.”

Thor whines.

“I have caught us a brace of rabbits for broth – though you might have them, if you can stomach them raw. I will cook later; I am far too tired to prepare a meal now.”

Thor shakes his head.

“If you must mess yourself, there are rags in the corner – I do not think you can manage a chamberpot yet, nor get yourself outside.”

Thor grimaces but shakes his head again.

“What, then?”

Thor makes a peculiar growling noise, trying and failing to form a word. Loki has no more flat pieces of wood for a message, and is not inclined to sacrifice the floorboards or remaining furniture. Not pain, not hunger, not toileting – what other need could Thor have at this moment?

Loki hesitates and places a hand on Thor’s flat head. “There were no others living,” he says. “None but you to save.”

Thor drops his gaze and sits silent for a long moment, his muzzle heavy on Loki’s thigh.

“Sleep,” Loki says. “I have brought you back from the edge of death, but you are weak, and your body needs time to heal. You must be strong in this form before I try to return you to your own shape.”

Thor quietly lifts his head and shuffles back, lowering himself gingerly to the ground. He stares blankly at the fire, and despite his enormous size, looks somehow smaller than he did before.

I said sleep, not brood, Loki thinks, but he is far too tired to bother with a one-sided conversation, and so despite the fact that it is now most certainly morning, he climbs back into bed, hoping to fall immediately into a dreamless sleep. He has no such luck, which surprises him not at all; instead, it is a long, slow slide into slumber, punctuated by the unfamiliar sounds of company in his cottage. If only Thor would stop sighing, he thinks muzzily, but sleep claims him before he can be certain whether or not wargs can weep.


	2. Chapter 2

Loki wakes and immediately regrets it. His arm is throbbing nearly as much as his head, and the bright daylight streaming in through his narrow windows does not improve matters. It must be gone noon and yet he is still exhausted. He could happily sleep for a week. But even as he contemplates giving in to temptation and pulling the blankets back over his head, he knows he must rise. There is a trail to disguise, goats to milk, traps to empty, supplies to gather and a warg’s voice to be restored – a far cry from his usual sedate regime.

He forces himself to sit up, ignoring the wave of dizziness this provokes. He poured far too much of himself into his spellwork last night: such a working should have been with charms and tools to boost his power, and after a good week’s worth of preparation, of building up his own strength with rituals and recitations. His seidr is strong and his knowledge of galdr broad, but still, magic only gives as much as it takes, and he will pay a high price for such a hurried casting.  The bite marks on his arm throb dully, a far more mundane hurt, but one that will need more care to see it heals cleanly.

The click-click-click of claws on wood alerts him to Thor’s coming before the heavy head lands on the bed.

“You do realise you can retract those,” Loki says, rubbing his face.

Thor huffs in surprise and looks down at his paws. His toes flex and extend as he does his best to wriggle them, yet the wickedly sharp claws remain extended and no doubt digging into Loki’s already scratched floorboards.

“Give it here,” Loki says, holding out a hand. Thor has some trouble sitting up on his hind legs and resorts to bracing himself with one foot on the bed and the other placed awkwardly in Loki’s palm. There’s not a trace of the lethal grace the warg moved with before Loki restored his human mind: right now, Loki realises irritably, Thor is quite useless as a killer of any kind. He won’t be delivering dinner or vengeance any time soon.

Loki squeezes the pads of Thor’s paw in the same place as he had yesterday. Beneath the tough soles, he can feel the tight tendons and stiff muscles and he prods them with a finger. “You need to relax these,” he says. “Can you feel it? You’re walking around with your fists clenched. Just open your hands.”

Thor grunts in response, eyes narrowing as he concentrates. Slowly, the muscles in his foot begin to relax and the claws slide away, leaving surprisingly fluffy feet. A warg must be capable of great stealth, Loki muses, looking at the lynx like paws. Ideal for an ambush. Yet Loki has only every heard of them being deployed in a headlong rush, flung against an enemy shieldwall in open combat, so maddened by rage that they were incapable of anything else. What a waste of such a creature!

A few more moments and Thor sighs in relief as the claws in his other feet vanish. Has Thor spent the entire night tensed up like this? Has he not the sense to know where he is carrying tension in this body? But then – Loki watches, eyes narrowed, as Thor awkwardly moves aside. He seems stiff all over, and though the wound on his side has knitted itself closed in the night – what a creature! – it clearly still pains him. Perhaps his clenched paws paled into insignificance against his other hurts.

It seems they both need time to recover. But first there is the business of surviving.

Loki is ravenously hungry and no doubt Thor is too. The rabbits Loki caught last night are nowhere to be seen: he will not begrudge Thor for devouring them, for at least he did so quietly and did not wake Loki to pester him for cooked food. Still, it means yet another chore to be done before Loki can go back to sleep.

“Come on,” he says to Thor, who is staring at him with a peculiar intensity. “Clumsy as you are, you might as well make yourself useful to me.”

Outside, everything is slow going. As soon as Loki opens the door, Thor bolts out behind a bush, skittering a little on four legs like a puppy. Loki leaves him to his business and feeds his disgruntled goats; his nanny-goat is in a vicious mood and attempts to headbutt him twice as much as normal, while her kid amuses itself by leaping about the pen until it lands in the milk-bucket. Loki calls for Thor to stay hidden and forcibly drags the goats out of the pen and behind the house, where they can be tethered to feed. He normally lets them wander, but they’re so spooked by Thor’s scent that they’re likely to scatter into the forest, and he cannot face rounding them up later.

Emptying his traps doesn’t go much better: Thor accompanies him on the round, visibly concentrating on how to walk until he finally finds his stride. He’s heavy footed and unused to his own bulk, crashing through the undergrowth and leaving the kind of wide trails Loki associates with the hunters and wood-gatherers foolish enough to venture into this remote area of forest. He learnt how to move much more secretly through the woods long ago; to be so conspicuous scrapes across his nerves, even though he surely has nothing to fear in his own territory.

It is not only Thor’s clumsy feet that announce their presence to the forest at large. Thor is clearly frustrated with his inability to speak, and despite the fact that Loki is perfectly content to walk in silence, he keeps trying to communicate with him, at ever increasing volume. He growls, huffs, chirrups and snarls; he croons, yelps, whimpers and whines, trying to force his wolfish jaws to form words, his beast’s throat to yield a voice. It cannot be done, and yet he keeps trying, until Loki’s patience snaps and he snarls himself, demanding some peace and quiet or he will drag Thor back to the beach and leave him there. Thor very obviously wants to shout back, but after a series of strangled barks he abandons the attempt and throws himself to the ground, locking his jaws shut with an audible click.

Once Loki’s own temper subsides, he realises two things. One, that Thor is a man unused to being silenced, and equally unused to being thwarted in his will. He is totally dependent on Loki’s goodwill to have his voice and form returned to him, and yet he is unafraid and frankly, less grateful than Loki would like him to be. This is no minor son of a local chief: this is a man used to power and obedience, things he will not enjoy being without. Well, he will have to learn soon enough. Loki has no great fondness for men who fancy themselves greater than he.

Secondly, restoring Thor’s voice will be more difficult than first thought. Thor’s mind is intact and yet he cannot form words: the problem must be physical, in the structure of the warg’s vocal cords. Loki had thought he could simply reunite body and mind, lend Thor’s spirit strength and flexibility in using the unnatural form he finds himself in, but no. Now he must grant the power of speech to an animal not usually capable of it, a different order of magic altogether. It might well be better to work his seidr on himself, open himself up to the language of wargs in the way that seidkona open themselves to the whisperings of the forest, the birds, the deer and the wolves.

Neither realisation is a pleasant one and Loki’s temper does not improve as they make a slow circuit of his traps. At least there’s a few more rabbits for the pot at the end of it; but, again, it only leads to another task, for its not enough to feed them both, not with his own head spinning from hunger and Thor’s stomach rumbling loudly. He hates to do it, but he ends up taking Thor to one of his hidden caches and getting him to dig up a deer carcass he was hoping to keep for winter. He sits on his heels, breathing slowly as Thor’s powerful legs finally come into their own and he excavates Loki’s pit in half the time it had taken Loki to dig it. Even now, in the warmth of summer, there’s ice in the earth if you dig deep enough, and the deer has kept well.

“You’ll have to drag it,” Loki tells Thor, rabbits slung across his shoulders and hands full of the herbs and wild grasses he’s picked up along the way. That means an even slower and more obvious trek home, as Thor tries his best to carry the carcass as a dog would, but keeps tripping over his feet. A blind man could tell that something unnatural has passed through the forest and follow its path back to Loki’s home: the hairs along Loki’s neck prickle with unease all the way back.

Loki has become used to the unending days alone. His time is the time of the forest, the slow systolic heartbeat of the seasons, the regular turning of the moon. There has been no hurrying for him for a long time but now, urgency flutters within him like a trapped moth. He needs to remove the signs of Thor’s arrival as soon as he can; he cannot say why, but he has the distinct sensation that time is running out. He may have been the first scavenger on that beach, but he will not be the last.

“We must eat quickly,” he tells Thor, who seems immune to Loki’s fears. Then again, his time should have ended yesterday. That he has lived another day at all must have come as a surprise to him. “We have much to do before sunset and neither of us is strong.”

Thor grunts in assent.

“I will cook the rabbits, but if you like, you may have the deer,” Loki says, waving at the carcass. “Can you eat it as it is?”

Thor’s gaze slide away but he nods.

Good. His jaws and stomach will manage it well enough: any reluctance is in his mind, and Loki is in no mood to coddle him. The sooner Thor can hunt and feed himself, the better.

“Eat up then. Then we hide the trails – and replenish my supplies – and have a proper wash -” Loki trails off, even more exhausted just thinking about it all. Food. First, he must eat.

***

As the rabbit stew cooks, Loki makes an attempt to restore some order to his house. It seems Thor was not idle while waiting for Loki to wake: all the broken furniture has been pushed into a pile, making it that much easier for Loki to throw the shattered pieces into the woodpile. It’s a shame to lose his chairs, but he made them before and he can make them again. He still has one to sit in before the fire, and that will have to do. He salvages what he can of the filthy bandages and other waste for the fire; that which he cannot burn he takes outside to bury in the latrine pit.

Thor glances up from the deer, muzzle matted with blood, and immediately looks away. The sounds of bone crunching and flesh tearing do not resume until Loki is safely back inside. Does he think me fearful, Loki wonders as he tucks into his own meal with relish. Or is he ashamed that he is gnawing at a carcass like an animal?

It is foolishness, either way. Thor is an animal, and will eat like one for as long as he has a warg’s body. There is no fear or shame in such an obvious truth. Why, at this moment his palate probably prefers the taste of raw meat to the spiced rabbit Loki is wolfing down. What is, is, and is not to be fretted over.

His belly full of food, his bed seems even more inviting, but unease has settled onto Loki’s shoulders like spiderwebs, fragile but clinging. It drives him back outside despite his exhaustion, to see that Thor has devoured the entire deer: hooves, hide, brains and bone. An appetite like that will destroy Loki’s caches in days, but his hunger surely means that Thor’s body is healing well and he will be back to full strength soon. His grace, however, is still lacking: he is licking his lips sloppily and pawing at his blood-stained muzzle. He’s managed to cover his face and chest in gore, not to mention the state of his feet and legs where he’s obviously struggled to hold the deer down and tear off chunks of meat. He is absolutely filthy and reeks of death. There is no possibility that Loki is going to allow him back in the cottage in that state.

 “I must conceal our trails,” Loki tells him. “Stay here, and when I return I will take you to the pools to get clean.”

Thor whines urgently and makes a greater show of pawing at the mess he’s made of his fur.

“I must see to the trails first,” Loki says. “It is your own fault you are so dirty. You can wait.”

He turns on his heel and freezes as a low growl fills the clearing. It takes every scrap of courage he still possesses to turn around and face the warg without raising his hands.

“We are not safe,” Loki warns, struggling to speak with such a dry mouth. “Anyone could follow the trail from the beach. Anyone with even the slightest lick of sense can see that a large creature has been moving around my cottage. I do not know your enemies, Thor, but can you be sure that none of them will return to that beach and come looking for you?”

Thor sits back down on his haunches and fixes Loki with an intent stare. But Loki cannot read it, cannot infer anything except Thor’s determined stubbornness. Fear curls in his belly. Would Thor attack him over something as trivial as this? There’s nothing to stop Thor finding his own way to the river while Loki cleans up their trails. This is more about being commanded than the command Loki gave, surely. Would Thor try and fight him, simply to prove his own might over Loki?

Loki thinks of the warriors he once knew. He remembers the endless squabbles and savage fights at court, where men fought bitterly over who sat where, who was served first and who spoke directly to their king. Men died there, for little more than a sneer at the wrong moment, or the wrong jest made to the wrong man. This Thor is almost certainly of their ilk: he likely prizes his name and his honour more highly than his life. In fact, he must, for why else would he have sacrificed all to become an ulfhedinn?

Suddenly, feeding Thor the deer seems like a crucial error of judgement.

“Very well,” Loki says, feigning irritation. He must not show his weakness, nor his fear. “If you are so intent on your own cleanliness, then we shall go to the pools first. But then we really must conceal the trails. I take your safety very seriously. I have not rescued you – at no small risk to myself, you will remember – just to see you hunted down and killed.”

He makes a point of rubbing his injured arm and, to his credit, Thor hangs his head and whines softly. The reminder of how much he owes Loki seems to have done the trick. But as Loki leads the way to the river and the pool Loki favours for bathing, a cold sweat prickles along his spine. A weapon you must negotiate with is just as likely to turn on you as serve you.

Hadn’t he proved that himself, so many years ago?

***

There are hot springs in the depths of the forest, where the earth is cracked and fissured and the trees give way to scrub and bare rock, but they are much too far for Loki’s nerves today, and so he and Thor must make do with the plunge pool of the closest waterfall. Loki planted soapwort along the banks many seasons ago, and there’s a profusion of them now, with pink, star-like flowers that smell faintly of cloves and fruits. Loki crushes the leaves between his hands and rubs them together to create a lather; he washes himself briskly before advancing towards Thor, who is stood chest deep at the edge of the pool, with clearly no intention of submerging himself further.

Despite his lingering fear, it’s oddly soothing to wash Thor, first massaging the thick fur and then rinsing it, over and over, until the gold begins to gleam and shine. Thor clearly enjoys it, closing his eyes and letting his tongue loll out, and his good mood helps to relax Loki, to restore some of his confidence in being so close to the warg. He’s careful not to irritate the wound on Thor’s flank, but pleased to see that all the smaller scrapes and bruises have vanished completely. Thor is solid with muscle and as Loki plucks up his courage and washes his muzzle, he can almost dispassionately note how strong and healthy his huge white teeth are. Looking at him, it would be impossible to guess he almost died yesterday. Could there be a way to mimic the healing effects of the transformation spell – to heal like a warg without becoming one?

It’s a pleasing puzzle, and Loki muses it on as he works almost in a trance, his hands slowing to the pace of his mind until he’s more petting Thor than cleaning him, lingering absently at the base of his ears as Thor pushes his great head into Loki’s chest, as a dog would. He enjoys having his chin scratched too, though he doesn’t wag his tail like a dog; instead, he’s crooning low in his throat, and it’s such a pleasing sound that Loki keeps going long after the lather has washed away, his mind back in the long timelessness of his casting last night, trying to remember the shape of the runes on Thor’s human skin, the nature of the weave holding the warg form.

Drifting in his thoughts, it’s not until he feels the slap of water against his thighs that he realises he has begun to sway – not with exhaustion, but with rhythm. Ur is vibrating in his throat, in rough and ready harmony with Thor’s own rumbling, and somehow Loki is half fallen into trance already, his mind reaching out for the slow breathing of the forest all around them. Like this, he can feel the great swell of power in Thor, calm and still as the summer air now, but ever rising, ever growing as his strength returns. There is none of Loki’s own magic here, for he is far too tired to craft at all; the galdr is rising from the living world around them, flowing towards Thor  - but Thor is doing nothing more than breathe, his fur warm beneath Loki’s fingers. What is happening here?

Loki jerks free and Thor yelps as the gossamer-thin web of seidr between them breaks.

Loki’s arms windmill frantically as he tries to put some space between them, feet slipping on the smooth stones of the pool’s floor, and he crashes into the water in an undignified heap. He rises, spluttering, in almost the same moment, soaking Thor with the wave his sudden reappearance makes. As he gasps and pushes his hair out of his face, he sees his bandages floating on the water – but there is no pain in his injured arm, not even a stinging. He looks at his pale, unmarked flesh and runs his other hand over it, just for his fingers to confirm what his eyes and frantic mind already know. He has been healed, as clean and neat a working as he has ever seen. But it did not come from him.

What just happened?

Loki doesn’t know, and that frightens him far more than Thor’s earlier posturing. Suddenly, the water is far too cold and the dappled light of the forest hiding altogether too many shadows.

“Come,” Loki says, ignoring Thor’s questioning whine. “It grows late. We must return to our work.”

***

There are hunters at his house.

It would be one of the most satisfying ‘I told you so’s of Loki’s life, were he not absolutely certain that the two men poking around the cottage represent a very real threat to he and Thor. They have, of course, come up from the beach, but they were no armour, nor fine courtly clothes: this is no rescue party, looking for survivors – or hostages. They are a motley pair, in worn leathers and cheap cloth, yet fairly bristling with knives, throwing axes and a bow apiece, but have no net, no rope for binding. They have come to kill something, not capture it.

Whatever battle was fought on the bloody sands, these two ragged wanderers were surely no part of it. No, someone has paid them to sniff around after the fact, to follow the trail and ensure that nothing and no-one has survived, to carry the tale or seek their vengeance, be that warrior, warg…or  a wood-dweller careless enough to let himself be found in such company. Who has sent such killers, and why it mattered enough to hunt down something almost certain to die anyway, will be worth thinking on – but not at this moment.

Loki’s gaze darts around his clearing. He has nothing to work with out here, no talisman or amber spindle to help him weave an illusion; he has no goatskin blanket or catskin hood to help him blind their senses. It is just him and the strength of his will.

His fingers tighten on Thor’s pelt. He needs all the help he can get. “Do not move,” he says, his own lips barely moving. “Do not make a sound.”

Thor inhales, clearly about to disagree and disobey, but the hunters have seen them and are already approaching; Loki can only trust he will do as he is told.

“Good day to you,” he says, inclining his head with a touch of his old courtier’s flattery. He traces two lines in Thor’s fur as he speaks, a sharp stroke downward, and a slanting, shorter one across.  “What brings two fine young men like yourselves to the home of a poor, pitiful old woman such as I?”

The two men blink, almost in unison. “Good day, old mother,” the younger says, his relaxed tone at odds with his furrowed brow. “We have followed the tracks of a dangerous beast from the beach to this place. Have you seen anything unusual this day?”

Loki hums softly, as is to himself, as if in agreement, or perhaps as if he were an old crone, half mad with loneliness. His fingers tap lightly against Thor, shaping and reshaping two runes: the knot of Naudiz and the gambling-cup of Pertho. Necessity and chance. His strongest watchwords.

“Only yourselves,” he says. “I have few visitors, these days. You seek a dangerous beast, you say? There are bears aplenty in these woods, but none have come down this far yet this season.”

“We hunt something far more dreadful than a bear,” the older hunter says, and despite Loki’s efforts, suspicion is writ plain across his face. “Something was dragged from the beach to your house, old one. What did you find at the battlefield?”

Loki places a hand on his chest in mock alarm. “A battle? So near my house? No, it cannot be. There are no farms to burn, no halls to raid. Surely you mean your kin struck further up the coast, where the villages are.”

“There was a battle just there,” the older hunter growls, flinging a hand out at the wide and furrowed trail made by Loki yesterday. “One the skalds will sing of for years to come. You mean to say you knew nothing of it? Heard nothing of it? Did not loot the dead or look for any living?”

“This is the first of I’ve heard tell of it,” Loki says, which is not, technically, a lie. “How dreadful. Such violence on my doorstep!”

“If you did not make this trail,” the younger says, “then what do you think did? Did you hear anything in the night?”

“I sleep soundly,” Loki says, horribly aware of the sweat trickling down his back. “And I have learnt not to open my door at night. It is not safe for an old woman alone.”

He is too tired for this. He can feel the tension vibrating through Thor, the fear and fury barely held in check. He continues to comb his fingers through the golden fur, partly to soothe, but mostly to use the action as a poor imitation of weaving, twisting and tangling the pelt as if it were a loom, desperate for the faint eddies of power it grants him.

Two is difficult, especially with the second one prowling around, attention on Loki’s house, on the forest and its tracks, and not on Loki’s voice and eyes. He can hold the one with little effort, but must keep breaking away to work on the other: all it will take is some small sign from Thor that he is not, in fact, an ill-favoured black goat and the illusion will shatter.

“I am grateful to you for taking the time to search around my house,” Loki says, letting his voice shake. “Whatever monster you seek would no doubt make quick work of an old woman such as I. If your beast came through in the night, it will be high in the mountains by now. There are caves and hidden valleys and all manner of strange and secret places in the depths of this forest.”

“So we have heard,” mutters the older hunter, quietly enough that a true old woman would struggle to hear him. “Here – what is this, here?”

The younger hunter moves off to join him, the two of them drawn to the midden tip out behind the cottage. They will find nothing there Loki cannot explain – but it is a moment’s break in their attention, and it is all Loki has.

“Go,” he hisses to Thor. “Hide in the woods. I will see them off the easier without you.”

Thor bares his teeth but he has some grasp of strategy at least, bolting back into the trees just as the hunters straighten up. The effort of concealing the swift movement and the swaying of the undergrowth leaves Loki light-headed; he was drawing on Thor’s strength more than he realised. His exhausted, aching shuffle up his steps and to his door is entirely truthful, as is the pressing need to lean against the frame for support as the hunters circle back round and he sweeps them back up with his gaze.

 “We have heard tell of a seidmarr in these woods,” the younger hunter says as the older eyes the broken bushes left by Thor’s passages. “The villagers were full of warnings not to enter this part of the forest. Do you not fear such a neighbour?”

“Oh, yes,” Loki says, working hard to keep the smugness from his voice. “I hear terrible cries in the night…but I keep myself well within after sunset and make offerings to the Lady to protect me and so I am safe. A great man like that has no interest in the likes of me.”

“Still,” the younger says. “would you not be happier if you moved closer to the village? We are a long way from anyone.”

“I should have left, many years ago. When I lost my boys and then my dear husband…but we built this house together, with our own two hands…” With a great deal of effort, Loki summons up a few tears to complement his quavering voice. Really, this is taking far too long. He had thought the guise of an old woman would bore these two, not provoke such naïve compassion.

“I meant no harm,” the younger says hastily. “We will leave you in peace. And have no fear. We will find the creature and slay it.”

“Such brave young men,” Loki says, willing them to be on their way. “I thank you for your concern.”

“Before we go,” the older hunter says suddenly, “we will search your house,” the older hunter says. “For your…protection.”

“Oh, must you?” Loki says. “It is but a poor and shabby home, not fit for guests.”

The older hunter’s eyes narrow. “Better to be safe than sorry,” he says, hand playing with the handle of his knife.

“Very well,” Loki sighs. “Let me offer you my hospitality, at least. A cup of ale, perhaps?”

“No,” the hunter says, but Loki turns as if he has not heard him and makes a show of tottering through his door. The older hunter follows, wary, and then the younger, looking uncomfortable.

“Must we?” he hisses behind Loki’s back. “You can’t really believe this old crone has managed to pen up a warg?”

“I believe there’s more to these woods than we’ve seen,” the older hunter says grimly. “If she is but an old woman, losing her wits without a family to care for her, then so be it. We’ve done her no harm. But if she is not…”

“What do you mean, if she is not?”

“Here,” Loki interrupts cheerfully, handing the younger hunter a cup of sour, watery ale. “I welcome you to my home.”

His lips pursue but his manners are good: he will not refuse the drink nor the welcome, and so he forces himself to take a gulp before handing it back. Loki offers it to the older one, who raises it to his lips, but whose throat remains still and eyes sharp as he gives it back.

“As I said,” Loki says, taking a sip himself. “My home is a humble one. But please, look around. I would not want to find a monster in my bed!”

The younger one smiles weakly but his eyes are darting around the house, noting the bundles of herbs, the many chests, the stew bubbling over the fire. The bindrunes carved around the doorframe are helping to boost Loki’s flagging strength, but even so, his power is fading fast. The broken furniture might be hidden away in the woodpile, but the evidence of Thor’s rampage is still all around them, in the scratch marks in the floor, the animal stink in the bedding in the corner. The general mess might be waved away as the inevitable consequence of an old woman struggling to care for herself, but as the older one inspects the room with a deepening scowl, Loki feels his time running out.

“What is this?” the older one says, prodding an overlooked scrap of stained linen with his foot.

“Come now,” Loki says. “You would not shame a woman by asking such a question…”

“A woman of breeding age, no,” the hunter says, glaring at Loki. “But you, old mother, have no need of such things. What have you been tending, that bled so deeply?”

“My goat,” Loki lies, taking a step back as the hunter advances. “It was mauled by something big.”

“And yet you said nothing of this until now,” the hunter says. “What else are you hiding?”

Loki flicks his gaze to the younger hunter and smiles.

The young hunter is swaying on his feet, hand to his head. “I don’t feel so…” he slurs, face pale. “Einarr…help…”

His legs buckle: Einarr curses and leaps forward to catch him. Loki moves too, racing for the chest at the back of the room. Einarr is struggling to disentangle himself from the dead weight of his now unconscious friend and it gives Loki the previous moments he needs to grab a goatskin hood, soft furred and fringed with amber beads.

He hears the rasping of steel as Einarr frees himself enough to draw his long knife. “Sorceress,” he snarls, lunging forward – but Loki is quicker, sliding underneath the outflung blade and pressing himself against Einarr in one fluid movement before wrapping the hood tightly around the hunter’s head.

The man freezes, eyes suddenly blank, and Loki’s lips peel back from his teeth in a feral grin. “Einarr,” he says, weighing each syllable carefully. “You knew better than to drink what I offered. But don’t you know better than to battle a sorceress in her own house?”

Einarr doesn’t respond, but it doesn’t matter. Loki has the man’s name and he will see and do whatever Loki wants so long as the hood stays tightly wrapped around his head. Loki hums happily as he ties the laces under Einarr’s chin, looping the knots into complicated symbols, ensuring his hold on Einarr is quite secure. The poor man looks quite ridiculous when Loki is done, but as Loki delicately removes his weapons and pushes his arm back down to his side, he reflects that he would probably prefer this humiliation to the death Loki could easily inflict on him instead.

A quick glance at the younger one confirms that he is out cold and will stay that way for a while. Perfect.

“Einarr,” Loki says. “Get on the bed.”

As the man woodenly obeys, Loki strips himself and returns to his chest for supplies. He could, of course, have killed this one and simply charmed the younger, without needing to use any more spellcraft, but he is not one to pass up such a golden opportunity to replenish his strength. The younger hunter has proved himself weak-willed, too easy to enchant and influence: that Einarr remained suspicious of Loki despite his casting suggests a strong will, all the better for Loki to yoke and feed from.

It has been a while since Loki last needed to draw on the strength on another to boost his own magic, but the working he performed on Thor has taxed him more deeply than he realised. There are protective runes and arcance defences strewn all around his house, and yet he had received no warning, no trembling in the webs of seidr he trusted to protect him. He should have been able to weave a glamour strong enough to deceive a pair of ignorant strangers with barely a moment’s thought, and yet he had struggled to disguise himself and Thor and had failed to enchant this Einarr or fully control the younger hunter. It can only mean that his own wellspring of power is all but dry.

It had not felt like so deep a working last night, but that is a thought for later. Now, he has a brief opportunity to make use of a man who would have happily killed him a moment ago, and Loki intends to use him well.

The pot of oil is cold and its contents more so. Loki grits his teeth and slides one slick finger into himself, and then another, his body less than welcoming after the exhaustion and exertion of today. He prepares himself as swiftly as he can, to the bare minimum he thinks he can stand. Practising sex magic with a partner held compliant by an enchanted hood is not ideal at the best of times, and he doesn’t have too long: he cannot hold Einarr indefinitely, and the drugged ale will wear off within an hour or so, and who knows when Thor will tire of skulking in the woods and return.

Einarr lies on Loki’s bed, staring blankly at the ceiling as Loki approaches. There’s no finesse in tugging down his trousers to reveal his soft cock; for a moment, Loki pauses, distracted by the memories of better times, of what can be done with a joyful and willing partner, of kisses and love games as well as power and magic.

He shakes his head. Those days are long gone.

“Einarr,” he says, arranging himself by the prone hunter. “You were right. The old woman was a wicked trollwife. You defeated her and freed the beautiful maiden she was holding prisoner. Let me show you my gratitude for saving me.”

Einarr blinks rapidly as Loki slides a thigh over him. He turns, hands reaching for Loki, but beneath the hood his gaze remains unfocused, his eyes glassy and wide. His lips move, but whatever he is saying is within his own mind, as is whatever he hears that makes him smile. He is lost in a dream of his own doing, and all Loki need do is relax and let himself be manhandled. He gives Einarr’s cock a few strokes, just to encourage him along, but the man needs little coaxing. His fantasy is not a complex one: he rolls Loki over and hauls him to his knees, the better to mount him from behind without any attempt at further caressing. Loki inhales sharply as his cock bumps along his hole and then forces himself to exhale as without any further fuss Einarr starts to shove in.

Pain lances through him, but there must always be a little sacrifice, and Loki focuses on the burn, on the resistance in his body and forces himself to yield, to open up both to the cock breaching him and the energy thrumming through the room. The threads of fate and fortune shimmer in the air, tangled around every living thing. Seidr crackles along them, flowing like water and burning like fire, a web of energy that sustains and draws on life and wyrd, a vast, complex network that surrounds and encompasses this room, Loki’s forest, their world.

The trance comes easily, but the surrender is hard. Loki inhales a deep, shuddering breath and gives himself up to the roots and branches of the World Tree flowing around him.

Power flood through him and it is hard, so hard not to seize it, not to try and control the tide of seidr beating against him, rising and falling with Einarr’s steady thrusting. To give up control grates against Loki’s nature: to let the magic ride him, to be carried wherever it will take him runs contrary to every rune Loki has ever cast, every galdr he has ever sung. To be seidmarr is to try and bend the flow of magic to his will, to tease at the warp and weave of fate and use the power of the runes to change the pattern, just a little, to make things at least seem other than they are. But this – this is the other side of that cloth. Without the runes to shape and guide his seidr, Loki can feel himself fraying at the edges, bleeding into the impossibly complex tapestry of power that holds the universe together. He is hanging on the World Tree, helpless and open – and if he stays here, something or someone will claim him, will ride the magic within in him and force words of prophecy through his unwilling lips.

He has practised true prophecy only once. He has vowed never to do so again, and certainly not like this, without steady hands to hold him and centre him, to bring him back unharmed. No, this is just a taste of the seething, a fleeting glimpse of the mysteries of seidr, and even as he begins to fall deeper into it, Loki is fighting against the trance, reaching for control once again.

Rutting is perhaps the oldest and simplest instinct: the drive to create life, the rising of sap and scattering of seed an impulse shared across the living, breathing world, and Loki feels the web of creation settle around them, linking his own beating heart and gasping breath to the man whose flesh moves within his. It is dizzyingly blissful and gut-wrenchingly terrifying, but Loki breathes away his fear and reaches for that web, drawing it closer to him, looping it like a noose around the ember of himself tucked away deep within. He reaches for the current of seidr driving Einarr on and gently, lightly weaves it into the web, letting it flow from the other man into him, a tide of power ebbing and flowing with the drive of his hips.

He could kill Einarr like this. If he wanted to – or simply if he wasn’t careful enough – he could keep draining him, could soak up more and more of the life burning inside him, leaving him a dry and withered husk. There is powerful magic in taking a man’s life, and power in bone and blood and seed. Loki could strip this man of everything he is and swallow it up for himself. Perhaps it would even give him the strength to rework the magic of the warg, to reshape Thor’s body – or his mind.

Perhaps. But more bodies would only bring more strangers and Loki wants no more visitors to his forest.

With a sigh, Loki loosens his grip on the web of seidr surrounding them, letting the weave unravel and slacken. As he does so, Einarr’s movements become rougher and faster, until he climaxes with a cry and promptly collapses. Loki grimaces to himself and carefully works his way free from his prone body. He gingerly gets to his feet, uncomfortably aware of the sticky mess sliding down his thighs. The aftermath of working with a less than freely willing partner is never pleasant.

 But Einarr has played his part well. Loki’s body thrums with energy, his exhaustion completely gone. More importantly, he can feel his own seidr seething within him, fully replenished and burning brightly. Loki tips his head back and laughs. The fool thought himself a mighty hunter, thought to threaten Loki in his own home – and yet has saved Loki the trouble of sitting in trance for nine nights, drawing on the living heart of the forest to restore what he lost in healing Thor. A little discomfort and the frustration lingering in his own groin is a small price to pay. Now, all he has to do is –

A soft huff catches his attention and he whirls, hands crooking into rune signs. Thor is sat in the doorway, lip curled as he scents the air. It’s impossible to read human emotion in his wolfish face: he could be disgusted, terrified or furious. Judging by those Loki has known before him, it’s likely all three.

Loki lowers his hands and stands tall. There is no shame in what he has done. “I have not killed them,” he says, in case Thor cannot tell. He wants no misplaced justice dealt out against him. “Will you help me take them back to the beach?”

Thor stares at him. How long had he watched, Loki wonders. Had he come back to take his own vengeance for the massacre on the beach? He cannot blame Thor for assuming that these hunters are in the service of whoever he faced on that beach , nor for wanting to exact his own price for the suffering he has so far endured. But it is not something Loki can allow.

“If you kill them,” Loki says, “then more of them will come. I cannot win against an entire raiding party, and you are neither strong enough nor skilled enough to fight as you are. I can help you take your vengeance for your lost companions – but not yet. You must trust me. We must wait.”

Thor is holding himself very still. Despite what he has just said, and the power swirling within him, Loki knows that if Thor attacks, it will go hard for him.

It is so hard to tell what Thor is thinking. Once, Loki had been a master of reading faces, of winnowing truth from lies in the tilt of a head, the quiver of a voice. He’d set ambushes in casual questions and traps in friendly advice; he’d fishing the depths of men’s hearts for their fears and their secrets, and whispered it all to a grim king on a golden throne. But that was long ago. In his exile, he has lost his deft touch with human nature. He waves different webs now, and holds different secrets close – and he cannot tell what Thor will do.

Thor scents the air again, slowly, as is for emphasis, and then nods, just once.

Loki exhales. “Good. Good. Now, the litter I dragged you on collapsed under your weight, but with some work, I can make another to return these two  -”

There’s a horrible squealing as Thor begins to carve in Loki’s floorboards with his claws. He’s far more delicate this time, managing the angular shapes with great concentration. Loki waits in silence, biting down on his anger, and twisting his head so can see what point Thor is making.

“Voice,” he reads. “You bargain with me? Your aid for your voice? I will return it, as I have said. I simply need some time.”

Thor gives him another long, flat look before tapping the scratched word with one very large claw.

Loki shrugs. “As you wish,” he says. “Your aid for your voice. But surely you will see that we must return these two and remove all sign of the trail first.”

Thor nods and then, in one fluid movement, turns his back on Loki and vanishes into the daylight, leaving Loki to clean himself as best he may and wonder what, exactly, he has brought upon himself this time.


End file.
